


History of the Time War

by TygerTyger



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Telepathic Bond, Time War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 22:32:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1874868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TygerTyger/pseuds/TygerTyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor discovers something about River that helps him to finally face his demons. River discovers that perhaps the Silence had been right about her husband all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	History of the Time War

**Author's Note:**

> Me getting my head around the Time War and how the Eleventh became the man who forgets.
> 
> It gets quite graphic in a couple of places, so if that sort of thing triggers you, best to avoid this. Also giving a warning for non-con, but that part is not explicitly written.

The Doctor stared blankly at the scanner screen. He’d been trying to read the output for at least twenty minutes, and was still none the wiser. He couldn’t quite get his mind into the required gear. River had taken herself off to bed and left him alone with his own thoughts and a half dozen subroutines. He glanced at the output again. It was still complete gobbledegook.

He threw himself down into the nearest jump-seat and buried his head in his hands. He couldn’t do this. Not tonight at least. He needed distraction, and really, if River was going to be staying aboard the TARDIS—in her own room, no less—she should be the one to provide it. What was the point in having her there, if she was just going to leave him on his own?

He pushed himself out of the seat and strode off to find her room, the one that had just appeared one day, soon after he dropped her parents off in their new home. Once he was outside the door, his bravado dissipated. Instead of a firm rap and a demand that she come back to the console room, he gave a light knock and a sheepish, “Can I come in? I mean— If you’re awake, that is…” He squeezed his eyes closed, embarrassed. “Obviously if you’re not, you won’t answer. I suppose—”

“Come in, you daft old man.”

He puffed out a breath of relief and opened the door to find River reclining on her bed in a pair of grey silk pyjamas. She had paused her pen on her diary to look at him as he entered. “I can come back later, if you’re busy?” he said, half-heartedly turning back towards the door.

She snapped her diary shut. “Not at all,” and then patted the space next to her on the bed.

He sat down, took off his boots and let River lead him to rest his head on her lap. With light familiar fingertips, she stroked along the contours of his face, and his eyes fell shut.

For some time now, he had been making love with her. Meeting up with her while her parents slept. Not that he knew they were her parents at the time, mind. If he had, he would probably have been considerably more red-faced at the breakfast table. Those nights were exciting. Thrilling. But since the Ponds left, his relationship with River had changed. There was tenderness now, which had been fleeting before. It was as though she always knew what he needed, even before he did. He hated that.

Her fingers ghosted across his brow, and he felt loved. Not in that silly way humans claim to feel loved by one another, no, it was unmistakably her love passed directly into his mind. His eyes shot open. “River!”

“Hmm?” She opened her own eyes and looked down at him.

“You’re a touch telepath.”

She blinked at him. “You didn’t know that? But even in Berlin, I— How could you not notice?”

“I must have been slightly distracted by the fact that I was dead.” He got up from her lap and knelt in front of her.

“Wow,” River said. “So we haven’t, you know—” She tapped her own temple.

“No. We definitely haven’t.” He mimicked her gesture.

“But we have… Eh…” She was searching for a phrase to spare his blushes.

“Yes. A lot. Frequently. Maybe a little too much to be healthy.”

“And you never noticed?”

The Doctor gave her an exasperated shrug.

“Well isn’t that funny! I must be better at shielding than I gave myself credit for. I must remember that actually. Wow.” She shook her head a little and looked at him again. “Oh! So that makes this your first time. Hang on a sec.” She leaned over and grabbed her diary and rifled quickly through it. Once she found what she was looking for she studied the page carefully for a moment and then put the diary aside again.

She sat cross-legged in front of him and closed her eyes. The Doctor stared at her, confused. “What are you waiting for?” she asked.

“What? You want me to go leaping into your mind? Just like that?”

“That was the point, yes.”

He felt a hard lump form in his throat and he clenched his jaw. “You know what? Forget it. I’m sorry I came down here at all.” He stood up and made as good a fist of storming out as he could manage in stocking feet.

He was seething as he stalked down the corridor. The lump in his throat was burning now. How could she be so blasé about it? Didn’t she know what she was messing with? The fury in his chest was painful and he thumped the wall as hard as he could, biting back a yowl of pain as his knuckles cracked on impact.

He stopped then and tried to regulate his breathing, shaking his fingers out and testing each of the joints in turn. Nothing broken, he cradled his hurt fist and let his forehead rest against the wall.

“Doctor?” River stood a short way down the corridor, clearly concerned.

He smiled sadly at her in apology, and she approached him, laying a hand on his shoulder. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed further apologies to her forehead.

“Come back,” she whispered. “Let’s talk about it.”

“Okay,” he said, surrendering. “Okay.”

 

*   *   *

 

He lay facing her on her bed, his fingers toying with the curls by her ear. “What if I see something I shouldn’t?”

“You won’t.”

“You can’t keep your spoilers safe if I’m inside your head.”

“Trust me, I can.” Her tone was gentle, for once without a trace of mockery.

“It’s just that, well, I’m afraid that if I see something I’m not supposed to it will change things”

“And that makes you afraid?”

“Yes!” He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I don’t want it re-written. Not one line.”

“It?”

“Us,” he confessed. “Me and you.”

Pleased, she smiled and kissed his hand. “Good. But I promise it won’t. Remember, I already know.”

The Doctor hummed, unconvinced, and cupped her cheek.

“It’s not just that,” she said. “I think you need it at the moment. I noticed you counting earlier.”

His thumb stopped. He hadn’t realised she knew about the counting. “I don’t see how my linking with your mind will—”

“It will. But you have to trust me. Please, let me help.”

 

*   *   *

 

The Doctor couldn’t help but wring his hands in his lap.

River, sitting before him on the bed, separated the finger-tangled knot of his hands and smoothed them out, long and straight. She kissed his fingertips on one hand and then the other, and then led his fingers up to press softly to her temples.

“Close your eyes,” he felt her say, and he complied. He could feel the warmth of her mind calling him home. It was unmistakably home, not the straight lines and jarring intersections he had come to expect from a human mind. His chest loosened as his curiosity got the better of his apprehension.

He allowed the last of his resistance slide away, and saw at last the open expanse of her mind. It had been so long since he had been with someone in this way, and not fumbling in the dark corridors and predictable order of human minds. Even before, he had never been with someone quite like this, so full of light and air and openness, with nothing to fear. Nothing.

His own mind was a tangle, overgrown with the twisted choking vines of guilt and worry, but River’s? Somehow, River’s was the home of his youth. Ordered and peaceful, right down to the dome above and the silver leafed trees growing up through the red grass. His hearts twisted at the reminder of his loss, and he knew that River must have felt it, because she turned her face to kiss his palm.

“Was it always like this—like Gallifrey—or was it something I did?” he asked.

“It was the TARDIS, the day I first set foot inside her in Berlin. She wanted me to know you, I suppose.”

Before he could ponder that revelation too deeply, a breeze whirled around the courtyard, picking up dropped leaves and enveloping him in the citrus scented warmth of her.

“Can you let me see you here?” he asked, still unsure of the limitations.

The breeze stirred wind chimes hanging by a pergola next to the fountain, and River stepped out from behind and walked across the flagstones, wearing something closer to ancient Greece than Gallifrey. Light coloured fabric was draped across her form and adorned with a heavy gold yoke. She smiled and he could feel it mirrored on her face between his palms outside of their connection.

“How detailed is this place? Does it have everything?” he asked.

“You tell me _._ ”

“Let’s see if we can find my old dormitory room.”

He took her hand and led her along the courtyard path to the Academy dormitories. The detail was astounding, all of the things he remembered, from the polished brass handle of the heavy front door, to the broken flagstone at the threshold. The door even had the same weight as the original. He realised then. “She created this from my memories.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

He took both of her hands and laced his fingers with hers. “Are you okay with that? It is your mind after all.”

“Do I resent it, you mean? Some days, yes, when you’re being particularly insufferable.” Her smile was playful. “But mostly, I’m grateful. What was here before was… I used to be afraid to sleep.”

He kissed her softly on the forehead. “Come on. Let’s see what else we can find.”

They climbed the great wide stairs to the boarding quarters, and he ran his hand down the heavy brocade curtains that he used to hide behind as a child. Eighty-three steps from the top of the landing to the innocuous door of his dormitory room; turn the handle, and give it a shoulder-shove to open it with a creak. He smiled widely at its faithfulness to the original.

His heavy wooden desk was almost invisible beneath an untidy pile of papers, with his antique brass earth sextant being used as a paperweight. “Almost got expelled for pinching that!”

His bed was unmade as always. He stared at it, and a dark and painful memory made itself known. A foolish, childish game taken much, much too far. “You shouldn’t be so trusting, Theta.” The old familiar voice startled him.

“It can’t harm you,” River said, “It’s just a memory fragment. This room is your window.”

“Sorry? My what?”

“You can view your memories from a distance here. That’s what you told me.”

“Why is my window in your head?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re familiar with this one? You’ve seen it before?”

“Yes.” He could feel her empathy for him, the way her hearts dropped a fraction. He brought the memory forward until he could see it. He understood then why she had called it a window. It was different to how it was inside his own mind, where he was limited to a participant’s view. A victim’s view.

“He wasn’t well, River. It wasn’t his fault.”

“That doesn’t make it hurt any less though.” Her mouth made a sad line and he knew she could feel the crush of his anguish as though it were her own. She looked away, but he watched, for the first time able to think about it without getting mired guilt and anger.

“It wasn’t your fault,” River said, finding his conclusion a moment before he did. He let the image fade back again and took River’s hand.

“Thanks,” he said, giving her a sad smile.

“Don’t mention it.” She turned to him and he held her, resting his chin on her head.

“Ha,” he said.

“Yes?”

“You’ve made yourself a bit taller.”

“It’s my mind, I’ll do what I like.”

He lifted her chin and brushed his lips with hers, and a wave of emotion passed over him. His own mixed with hers. “Wow,” he said.

“I know.”

He could feel the heat in her cheeks between his palms on the outside, and he was tempted to break the connection just to witness River blushing, but he had a better idea.

“Want to come over to mine?” he asked.

She nodded, and he would have called it coy if it hadn’t been River. He prepared to draw back into his own mind, and River stopped him.

“Through there instead.” She was eyeing the tall dark hardwood wardrobe with golden inlaid vines.

“Sorry?”

“It’s a shortcut.”

This wasn’t any stranger than the other nuances of her mind, he supposed. He took the handle and placed his thumb on the brass catch making it click open and pulled. There weren’t the coats and uniforms and ceremonial robes he remembered, but warm enveloping blackness. He moved forward, fingers at the doorjamb as he pulled himself up into the wardrobe. River didn’t seem to be following.

“Aren’t you going to come?”

“You have to invite me. It’s our rule.”

“You’re always welcome.”

“That’s sweet, but it has to be explicit.”

“Every time?”

She nodded.

“Come with me, then.”

She smiled and followed him into the wardrobe, through the darkness and into the austere crumbling beauty of his mind. High walls and vaulted glass ceilings, above which stars were being created and destroyed, fusing their elements at their cores and smashing them apart again. The constant cycle of birth and death.

Vines twisted and choked the walls, and beneath them there were glimpses of beauty once golden and bright, worn back by the entropy of age and pain. He reached for her.

“Your clothes—you’ve changed,” he said. Her gown was now dark and, whilst still Grecian in style, was more severe than before. Slim silken ropes wound around her waist. Her hair was tied up, bound in twisting black ribbons, her eye makeup smoky and her lips red.

“Is this how I make you see yourself?”

“You don’t make me do anything; this is just how I feel.”

He glanced down over her body. The smooth ropes skimmed under her breasts where the fabric lay even and soft across their gentle undulation. She sighed on the outside, his feelings of desire transmitted directly to her. He took her hand to lead her to his sanctuary, where they could avoid the turmoil of the rest, but she resisted.

“Not this time. This time you need to look. You need to know.”

She moved off ahead of him, clearly familiar with his mind’s architecture, and passed the long row of doors where he kept his secrets safe. The fourth one was hers. He followed her to catch up, to move her away from it, but his mind betrayed him and made a shard of golden light shoot out from beneath her door. She glanced back over her shoulder at him with a question in her eyes and he couldn’t hide his panic. She could never know what was in that room, but he wasn’t sure he’d be strong enough to keep the door closed.

“It’s okay,” she said, and offered him her hand again. She knew it was hers and chose not to see. He relaxed, and the light faded.

She led him out across a raised pathway, which led to the crumbling ruins of the parts of his past he tried to forget. Sometimes when he slept, he would find himself planted in this wasteland, unable to move, begging to waken, but he had never come here willingly before. Then it dawned on him where she was taking him, what she was asking him to look at. Vines creaked and twisted up to block their path.

“You need to face it,” she said.

“No I don’t. Especially not with you here to see it.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“How can I not be? If I let you see it, you’ll, you’ll—”

“I’ll know what you’re capable of? I’ll feel differently about you?” He felt embarrassed that she had articulated his precise thought and dropped his head. She swept his fringe to one side and said, “I’ve already seen it.”

He brought his eyes to meet hers. Of course she had, and someday in his future he’d tell her to bring him there today.

“I don’t think I can, River. The last time I tried to look, I couldn’t. It’s just too much.”

“When we come here through the wardrobe, we can still use the window as long as I’m with you. Trust me, it won’t hurt as much this time.”

She tangled her fingers with his, and he was filled with her compassion for him. She had seen what he did, seen him for what he truly was, and only loved him more. The vines became liquid and spilled across the path, and disappeared down between the cracks.

Ahead, in the near distance, orange and black clouds rolled in across a sea and rumbled with electricity.

Albaston Minor.

Once the jewel of the Polmere galaxy, it was now reduced to cinders and its ocean poisoned with blood. Of course history marked it as an unfortunate case of collateral damage, but the Doctor knew genocide when he saw it. Neither the Time Lords nor the Daleks noticed the inhabitants of the planet they were each trying to claim in their turf war. Not even when they slaughtered every last one of them.

As they walked, he couldn’t help but look down over the muddle of twisted faces, and stray limbs. They were as vivid as the day it had happened, and only thing keeping him from screaming, as he had back then, was River’s hand in his.

“The Time Lords won this battle, you know,” he said bitterly.

Lightening flashed overhead and lit up the vista for miles, bodies upon bodies upon bodies, rended and strewn everywhere. He could feel River’s disgust and horror, mirroring his own, and he held her hand tighter.

“The child, we need to see her,” River said.

His blood ran cold at the thought, but the suggestion of her was enough to bring the memory to them. The other Doctor, the one that wasn’t the Doctor, crouched above the child’s broken body. She clutched her filthy doll, her head pillowed by the shattered corpse of her kinsperson. She sang an Albastonian nursery rhyme and stroked the doll’s bloodied head with shaky rough hands. Her dress was tattered, and beneath it her body was torn, entrails spilling onto the black sand.

She looked up at the man with shaking shoulders above her. “Where’s Daddy? He always comes when I have nightmares. _”_

“You’re still dreaming, little one,” the other Doctor said.

She returned to her nursery rhyme, singing the same part over and over. After a moment, the other Doctor put a soft hand to her head and silenced her.

“You had to,” River said. “It was the right thing to do.”

“She was the last, the very last of her race, and I had a hand in the rest.”

“There was no way to save her.”

“I never had to do that before or since, not like that. As I broke her mind, that nursery rhyme seeped back through the connection… When it’s quiet, I can still hear her repeating it, over and over.”

“I can help you forget it,” River said.

“I want to forget it but not her, I need to always remember her. She was the last straw, the reason I knew I had to do the rest.”

“Think of her again.”

He did, and she appeared again, but the rhyme was lost. Albaston Minor faded into the background of his memories, and they were on the path once more. He could feel himself tremble with gratitude. He pulled her into his arms and let himself weep and the relief pour out of him. She shared it with him. He could feel her tears hot on his palms outside of their connection.

“We can take a break, if you need it?” he said.

She shook her head. “Nearly there.” She slipped her arm around his waist, maintaining contact so she could breathe comfort into him as he faced what was to come next.

A great stone staircase spiralled down into the darkness to keep the fullness of terror and guilt out of reach. How many times he had stood here? Looking down into the pit, knowing what lay at the bottom, and paralysed by the grinding fear of looking directly at what he had done? How many times had his subconscious tried to crawl him down there in his sleep and force it upon him? But he had never finished the journey. He always managed to claw his way out, the will to survive greater than the draw to go down and lie in the pit of his own creation and never come up again.

But now he wasn’t alone, and his fear was tempered by the love she was enveloping him with. She wasn’t afraid, even though he could tell that she knew what lay below because she was bracing herself to see it. He looked down into the dark, and for the first time, he chose to descend.

The staircase opened up into the darkness as they made their way down, the steps ahead crumbled, and pieces fell away. Between the cracks, lava raged and burned. The well-trained constructs of his mind were trying to drive them back and save them from the madness that surely lay ahead.

But River. River dampened and cooled them, eased them in and down the treacherous path to the deepest recess of his memory, until beneath their feet they felt a monstrous breathing and writhing. She clung to him, and he to her.

He knew what he had to do, what he had to see, the consequences of his actions. If the child on Albaston Minor, and preventing a billion more like her, was his reason, this was the consequence.

He shook as he brought forth the Moment, and the instant of the decision he made to destroy Time Lord and Dalek alike, to end the endless bloody war, before it was ended by the destruction of every other living thing—every child—in the universe. As a theoretical construct, the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, may seem noble and right. But there was nothing noble and right about choosing to destroy your own home and family and race, and everything that ever was of them, or ever was to be of them.

 

They watched as other Doctor stood with his hand resting on that wretched button. His shoulders were hunched in defeat. The Moment had said all it needed to say and left him to make the decision alone. The other Doctor sighed and began to press down.

There was a deafening roar of flame and fire. The walls tumbled, and the world burned. Gallifrey burning. The sickening stink of innocent flesh charring and melting. The children, the children, the two-point-four-seven billion children. His own children, grandchildren, everyone he’d ever known, burning alive by his hand.

“Stop!” River’s voice came seeping through the mess of terror. “You weren’t there. This isn’t memory, it’s imagination. You can stop it.”

“I deserve to see the consequences of my actions. I can’t just forget.”

“Yes you can. You’re killing yourself.”

“I should have died with them.”

“No! The TARDIS saved you for a reason. It brought you out of the Time Lock because there was more for you to do. It wasn’t your time.”

The fire died, and his ninth incarnation arose from the ether clutching his freshly regenerated chest. Eyes wide in sickening horror as he realised he had survived. The cloister bell rang out balefully, and he desperately searched his mind for the sensation of others, of anyone else who might have somehow made it out. But everything was deathly silent and empty. There was no one else, and he was nothing but a shell.

The image faded from view, and River was still clinging to him. Her breathing was as shallow and erratic as his after bearing witness to his greatest sin. She was still reassuring, still there, still sharing his burden. He had faced it at last, and he had survived.

“Let’s go,” he said finally.

They retraced the route back out from the pit, and broke free from its greasy cling. Back past Albaston Minor, now daylight and serene, its mangled inhabitants thankfully elsewhere. He couldn’t remember the last time he had pictured it like this. No matter how often he returned in reality, the Albaston in his mind had always been as it was at the fall.

They continued back to where they had begun, and as they passed her door, River didn’t turn her head, she just held him tighter, and he felt her trust.

“Misplaced,” he said.

“Impossible.”

They arrived at the portal back to her mind.

“Will you come with me?”she asked, and he shook his head in apology. “Don’t be sorry.”She stepped through the portal and severed their link.

 

*   *   *

 

The Doctor’s eyes snapped open. They had fallen sideways onto the bed somewhere along the way, and his fingers were still pressed to River’s temples. He took his hands away, and there were perfect purple marks left behind. She was asleep peacefully inside her own mind, exhausted from their necessary ordeal.

He kissed her bruises softly.

His poor beautiful bespoke River, so damaged and yet so strong. He lay on his back and looked at the interior walls of the TARDIS, knowing what she had done and feeling ill at ease. Altered a human to fit his selfish needs. But she was still River, still very much a Pond, very much her own person, and he had fallen in love with her long before he knew who and what she was. He wondered what he could possibly provide for her to make amends and to repay her for everything she was because of him.

She looked serene.

He felt suddenly starving, and got up to make them tea and sandwiches. It was a start, at least.

 

*   *   *

 

River shut the door of her mind’s sanctuary behind her, and lay down on the bed. It had been Amy’s bed in Leadworth, but she’d stayed in it so often as a child it felt like hers too. She was safe here in Amy’s room, just as she had been back then. The tension loosened out of her body.

Finally, she had seen it in the right order. Finally, she understood properly. He had promised her she would someday. She knew now why she couldn’t have seen it before, because this was the time that she had helped him fix it. His first time with her in his mind.

Her first time was terrible and terrifying.

He had come to her and told her that he needed her comfort, so they made love, but then he wanted more. She was young. She was barely accustomed to having him her mind and had never been in his. When he threw open the door to the wardrobe in his academy dormitory and climbed inside, gesturing for her to follow she was curious. When she entered and realised that it was his mind, she was thrilled. A foolish young girl who thought she knew the man she was in love with.

But she didn’t know him. Not yet.

They passed a large pair of hardwood doors with brass handles and curved panels. There was something about the doors that called to her, and she approached them. She pressed her ear to the wood, and it whispered inaudibly to her as she placed her palm on the panelling and traced it down towards the handle. She felt a nudge as the Doctor pulled her away, and she knew that this was her door. Where he kept his secrets about her from her.

She could feel his worry permeate through her. “I’m sorry. Let’s go,” she said.

He brought her where he needed to go, into the pit. She knew now that he needed to watch it, so he could keep it out of his waking life. But back then she had no clue. Compared to what she had just seen, it was a mild version of events she saw that first time, but the horror ran a thousand times colder through her veins.

He had skipped Albaston entirely, and went straight to the burning. She watched them burn, and knew he had caused it. He had chosen it. Everything she had been told as a child was true. He really was a monster. And she had saved him and married him without knowing him at all. And now she was trapped, because she loved him still.

He didn’t notice her reaction at first, but when she began to struggle to escape, to let go of him and crawl back out, she felt him panic. Why had he shown her if he didn’t want her to see?

She tore out of his mind, severing the link painfully. She screamed in agony and terror as she opened her eyes and pushed him off her, heavy and clinging and screaming too. She didn’t know, but she had forced him back into experiencing the death of Gallifrey first hand. She scrambled off the bed, nausea taking hold, and heaved everything out onto the floor until she was spent. She collapsed into a heap, shaking and crying, waiting for him to wake up and finish her off. But he didn’t.

Several hours passed, and her shaking became a shiver of cold. She managed to heave herself up from the floor and crawled back over to the bedside to find some clothes. There was a fluffy pink dressing gown just under the bed, which had miraculously avoided her vomit. She pulled it on over her arms and wrapped herself up in it. She peeped up onto the bed; she half expected him to have changed form into something fearsome, but he looked smaller than usual, sweating and grey, and mumbling deliriously. She moved closer until she could hear what it was. “River.”

Her chest ached and she remembered him dying in Berlin, and how, as she poured her regenerative energy into him, all she could feel returned was love unconditionally given. If he really was a monster, surely she would have felt it then? She reached across the bed to him, and he felt cold. She climbed up next to him and braced herself before placing her fingers to his temples and allowing herself to be drawn back in to his mind.

He was lying on the ground staring wall-eyed in endless horror. Trapped. They burned all around him. She touched him, and his eyes shot to her. She couldn’t prevent her confusion and terror slipping into him. She feared him now, perhaps even more than she had as a child, but she also loved him.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, River. Please. Please, help me.”

She could feel his sincerity in his distress, and perhaps she wanted to believe the best of him, because he was all she had left. And maybe he was tricking her, but right now she’d take being tricked. “Okay.”

She brought him out of his despair and helped him wake up. He blinked at her; his eyes had lost some of their colour. Then he dragged himself up and went to the bathroom and shut the door. River sat on the bed and pulled her knees up under her chin. A moment later, the shower started, and then came that desperate sound she hadn’t heard before, or thankfully since: the Doctor’s thick and wretched sobs. She squeezed her knees tighter, trying to calm the flutter in her chest.

She got up, approached the bathroom door, and went to knock, but changed her mind and turned the knob instead. The Doctor was standing in the shower with the water scalding his back, turning it livid red. Her first instinct was to switch off the water or mix in some cold. She took a step forward, and he turned to look at her. “Don’t.” His voice was hardly recognisable it was so tainted with grief. He wiped his face with rough hands under the scalding torrent, and River flinched for him.

He turned off the water and came out. Taking a towel from the rack, he pressed it to his face and let out one final sob. River wanted to go to him, to put her arms around him and comfort him, but she stopped herself. She still had no explanation for what she’d seen in his mind. She crossed her arms tightly and waited for him to say something.

He dried his hair with the towel, and his skin had turned mottled and patchy as it recovered from the hot water. He moved to leave the bathroom. “Wait,” River said, and scolded herself for sounding panicked. “Aren’t you going to explain?”

He stopped, his shoulders dropping. “River, what you saw is true. I shouldn’t have brought you there today. I should have been more careful.”

River’s mouth opened to speak, but no words came out.

“Do you have a couple of hours to spare, so I can explain it to you?”

River could only shrug.

He took the collar of the pink dressing gown between two of his fingers. “It suits you,” he said, “you should hang onto it.”

River gulped.

“Sorry. A failed attempt to lighten the mood. I am sorry though, about all that. I’d give anything to change it. The last thing I ever wanted to do was scare you.” He stroked her cheek with a thumb, and she could feel the depth of his regret through his fingertips. She inclined her face into his palm, and was hit with a flood of his relief. She matched it with some of her own. “Get dressed,” he said, “and meet me in the TARDIS library. There’s a book there I want to show you. I’ll bring tea and scones.”

When she met him there, he had put himself back together. He showed her the book, and talked her through it from his perspective. The only record still in existence of what he had survived. _History of the Time War._

**Author's Note:**

> When I first posted I forgot to thank PhoenixDragon, who helped me straighten my thoughts for my first draft. Thanks Mandy!


End file.
